Bulgarian archaeologists have found a unique gold Thracian treasure in the famous Sveshtari tomb The team led by one of the most prominent Bulgarian experts on Thracian archaeology Prof Diana Gergova from the National Archaeology Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences BAS made the discovery during excavations at the so-called Omurtag mount.

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a well dating back to the Neolithic period some 8,500 years ago, the Antiquities Authority said on Thursday, adding that two skeletal remains were found inside.
The well, discovered in the Jezreel Valley in the northern Galilee region, contained a variety of artefacts, as well as the remains of a woman approximately 19 years old, and an older man, the IAA said.
Archaeologists said it was unclear how the pair came to be in the well, but hailed the discovery of the ancient water source.

Skeletal remains that were found inside a well that was discovered in the Jezreel Valley in the northern Galilee region (Israel Antiquities Authority/AFP, Yotam Tepper)

Israeli paleographer Ada Yardeni has recently identified 50 Dead Sea scrolls found near Qumran in Israel as having been penned by the same scribe, a scribe who also penned scrolls that have been found at the Herodian mountain-top fortress of Masada, where Jewish rebel zealots made their last suicidal stand against the Romans in 73 A.D.

Polynesia was one of the last places on Earth to be settled by humans, and new techniques reveal that this settlement first occurred within a 16 year window nearly 3000 years ago. The research, published November 7 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by David Burley and colleagues from Simon Fraser University, Canada, reveals that the first human settlers lived in a founder colony on the islands of Tonga between 2830 to 2846 years ago.

The first complete mammoth skeleton to be found in France for more than a century has been uncovered in a gravel pit on the banks of the Marne 30 miles north-east of Paris.
The find, first made in July but kept secret until this week, has yielded a second, even more exciting, discovery. Two tiny fragments of flint blade have been found embedded in the mammoth's skull close to one of its tusks.
Archeologists speculated, when they first found "Helmut le Mammouth" that he had come to a sticky end between 130,000 and 190,000 years ago. They concluded that the animal, maybe 9ft high and weighing up to five tonnes, had foundered on soft mud or quicksand. Now another possibility arises. The mammoth could have been attacked by one of the bands of Neanderthal men and women who wandered over the European tundra in the cold, dry period between two ice ages more than a thousand centuries ago. The predecessors and distant cousins of Homo sapiens must, at the very least, have feasted on the mammoth's carcass, possibly some time after its death.

Ötzi the Iceman, an astonishingly well-preserved Neolithic mummy found in the Italian Alps in 1991, was a native of Central Europe, not a first-generation émigré from Sardinia, new research shows. And genetically, he looked a lot like other Stone Age farmers throughout Europe.
The new findings, reported Thursday (Nov. 8) here at the American Society of Human Genetics conference, support the theory that farmers, and not just the technology of farming, spread during prehistoric times from the Middle East all the way to Finland. "The idea is that the spread of farming and agriculture, right now we have good evidence that it was also associated with a movement of people and not only technology," said study co-author Martin Sikora, a geneticist at Stanford University.

The beginning of India's history has been pushed back by more than 2,000 years, making it older than that of Egypt and Babylon. Latest research has put the date of the origin of the Indus Valley Civilisation at 6,000 years before Christ, which contests the current theory that the settlements around the Indus began around 3750 BC.

It's no tall tale—the first complete ancient skeleton of a person with gigantism has been discovered near Rome, a new study says.
At 6 feet, 8 inches (202 centimeters) tall, the man would have been a giant in third-century A.D. Rome, where men averaged about 5 and a half feet (167 centimeters) tall. By contrast, today's tallest man measures 8 feet, 3 inches (251 centimeters).
Finding such skeletons is rare, because gigantism itself is extremely rare, today affecting about three people in a million worldwide. The condition begins in childhood, when a malfunctioning pituitary gland causes abnormally growth.
Two partial skeletons, one from Poland and another from Egypt, have previously been identified as "probable" cases of gigantism, but the Roman specimen is the first clear case from the ancient past, study leader Simona Minozzi, a paleopathologist at Italy's University of Pisa, said by email.

The giant's tibia, or shinbone, compared with that of a normal Roman male of the same period.

Excavations at the former site of Caherduggan Castle, Co. Cork, have revealed a preserved composite leather and metal object that may be a unique survival in Ireland and Britain.
The dig was carried out in 2011 by Rubicon Heritage Services on behalf of Cork County Council, as part of a road realignment planned between the villages of Newtwopothouse and Doneraile in the north of the county.A medieval well

The investigations revealed a number of features relating to the castle structure, including the footings of a tower house and an enclosing stone-revetted fosse. Within the castle confines a medieval well was excavated that contained a number of extraordinarily well preserved objects. Amongst the material lost or discarded in its depths were a 13th/14th century bone gaming die, a 13th/14th century indoor side-seamed shoe and a curious long leather strip with what appeared to be metal-studding along its length.